Columns
Mike Adenuga @73: Salute to the icon who changed the story!
By Sunny Igboanugo
“If you woke me up today and put the question – who is the most patriotic businessman in Nigeria in recent history – the answer will pop-up out instantly – Mike Adenuga! I won’t even have enough time to wipe my drowsy eyes or clear my head out of the sleepiness. It is an answer that has lived in my sub-conscious for years.”
These were my exact words last year. I wrote those words out of a thankful heart to celebrate the multibillionaire, whom, I have just learnt, also goes by the sobriquet – The Chairman or The Great Guru – thanks to Uche Nworah – Ezeudo Ozonmkpu of Enugwu-Ukwu na Umu-Nri – a guru himself in many respects – who has just delivered a heartwarming dissertation on the telecommunications magnate from an insider’s perspective.
I also wrote those words out of great pains and immense regrets that The Great Guru doesn’t own a refinery – just yet – because if he did, Nigerians would not be subjected to the hellish, harrowing and nightmarish experience they are forced to undergo today by the present-day shylocks playing in that field. I won’t name names. Take your tongue and count your teeth.
Just as I commented on Uche’s emotion-laden essay on his ex-boss, if Mike Adenuga owned a refinery today, Nigerians might not be buying petrol above N300 per litre. Reason is he would have found some magic to get around all the arguments offered by the shylocks that have made them continue to see shege banza as the cost of the product, which has remained central to their very existence continue to soar.
You might dismiss this as foolhardiness or ignorance. But I have my reasons. As I wrote last year – Mike Adenuga, has done what I have never seen any other Nigerian do in my long years on earth – sacrifice profit for the benefit of the masses. The introduction by GLO of per second billing in Nigeria, years ago, is the reason you and me are not swimming in the pool of our own tears today.
It was the game-changer that actually put telephony in the hands of the ordinary people – the reason that you could be calling your mother in the village from as far as the UK, US and even China, outside Nigerian cities of Sokoto, Osogbo or Umuahia.
Else, were it not for this move, GSM, would still remain a big luxury like the days of the 090 – naught nine naught – days – telephony will still be a status symbol in Nigeria today – not because of the actual global cost implications – of course neighbouring countries like Togo, Ghana and Benin Republic – far less endowed – had been using it for years – but simply because the shylocks had cornered it.
Remember all the excuses they had offered on why per second billings were impossible in Nigeria. Don’t they sound similar the arguments being made about fuel today. Aren’t they same as the reason for why the cost of owning and maintaining DSTV is higher in Nigeria than any other country the services exist?
Now don’t get it twisted. I was one of the highly privileged here. For one, I wasn’t subjected to some of the hard experiences some people went through. Sampler! Less than a week GSM came into Enugu, I was sitting at 23 Edinburg Street, office of The Guadian, when some gentlemen walked in and handed me a package containing a GSM handset, SIM card package and scores of N1.500 recharge cards.
This was at a time anyone who wanted to key into the new status symbol would go to the courts to swear affidavits, return to the banks to pay a whopping N25,000 – close to N1million in today’s reckoning before being allowed to purchase a GSM SIM card. I didn’t go through the riguours. That was even long before GLO made it to the scene.
So, as a typical Nigerian, I ought to be grateful having a place in the “I better pass my neighbour” list in this regard. But the sheer thievery that followed would not allow that. You know in those days, these shylocks configured their billing to the model that if you generated a call you paid and if you received a call you also paid. This was the level the got. That was until the advent of GLO that changed those thieving models.
I had been wondering why Adenuga chose that game-changer model, which had been declared IMPOSSIBLE before then. Recall that it took the other networks some months to adjust to the per second billing which they must have taken more out of the force of business losses than compassion for the people or change in their original business environment to adjust. For all the variables and excuses they had cited for their shylock behaviour were still in place when they began to copy GLO.
So, I could relate with Uche when he wrote these words: “The Guru is the most kind and greatest benefactor that I know. He gifts, gives, and ‘dashes’ staff, friends, associates and others cash in naira and foreign currency, cars, watches, jewelries, choice drinks and other items. No wonder Dele Momodu uses the phrase ‘the spirit of Africa’ to describe him.
“I am a great beneficiary of his magnanimity as a staff. Not only does he pay above market salaries, he also gives staff money ‘under the table’. The special word for this is in Globacom is ‘stoning’. It is common to hear staff saying; “Mr Chairman ‘stoned’ A & B’. When you are ‘stoned’, you are not expected to tell the other person. It is frowned at in the system to avoid unsettling those who were not ‘stoned.’
Mr Chairman is famous for giving people gifts, even people he doesn’t know, but reaching him to thank him becomes impossible. He does not expect a thank you and also usually doesn’t expect any return favours. He once told us a story during a meeting, of how when he started making money newly, he started buying Rolls Royce cars and other luxury cars.
“He said after sometime he began to realize the vanity in such purchases, so he distributed the whole collection among traditional rulers nationwide. It is a known fact that many people have become multimillionaires just from Mr Chairman’s stoning alone.”
Who else could have chosen that route rather than teaming up with the shylocks to make mega bucks than a man with such a large heart. Without him, Nigerians would probably still be paying as much as N300,000 for SIM cards and cost of calls would still be hitting the rooftops for such mundane, obtuse and criminal reason(s) like – telephony is an international business.
Or haven’t you heard so in DSTV, in petrol and other commodities – as if Nigeria is a different world! So, thank you Uche Nworah. Now we know! I hear it is The Chairman’s birthday, Today, Wednesday, April 29, 2026. May I join the world in saying to the The Great Guru: Hhappy 73rd! We won’t forget.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
All over the world the media are always among the first line of victims whenever and wherever democracy dies and dictatorship or autocracy is enthroned. Through the emasculation and asphyxiation of free speech and or freedom of speech, the media become the immediate target in such circumstances.
From the look of things, I don’t think Nigerian journalists are at home with this reality. No! Not just yet! I don’t know why it seems so. But I could hazard some guesses and build up some scenarios which I believe could suffice in assessing the situation.
Perhaps, it is because many of those who lived this reality in the last days of military dictatorship in Nigeria, have since exited the profession, climbed to higher grounds or just receded to the background, as consequences of natural sequence of events where the old is supposed to give way to the new.
Perhaps, it could be the direct result of the evolution in the profession – one of them – the introduction of electronics – if not the substantial or even total reliance on it as news-gathering instrument, which has made the job less cumbersome – thus introducing a pattern of ease in this regard.
Perhaps, it could be the direct consequences of the dearth, diminished impact and even subdued relevance of the print media, which led in the past, now taking a back stage in the new reality of the dominance of the electronic media.
Most probably, the influence of the social media has played a fast one in determining the direction of the industry to the extent that it is now the main source of news even for the traditional outfits, as much as it serves substantially as a distracting, if not distabilising factor.
But whatever it is, either singularly or by a collection of these factors, there is evidence of a demonstrable detour or bypass of the traditional role the media played in Nigeria that helped to shape its history – including dragging it out of the dungeon of military rule into the globally-acceptable arena of what is supposed to be democratic ethos.
Tempered by the new realities of the current generation, the Nigerian media have not only lost the fight in them but had their fangs and claws so smoothened that they now end up as instruments for caressing the patrons and purveyors of bad behaviour the tore at and clawed deeply in the past.
In other words, they have lost the plot. Otherwise, how could the media watch Nigeria suffer this level of degeneration after its chequered history of practically fighting with a million dark spirits and other anti-democratic forces to extricate itself from the vice grip of military rule?
It takes the Nigerian media which has degenerated into an insufferable degradation and complacency to watch the country gravitate towards a one-party state and pretend that they have no role in stopping the drift. Such never happened in the past.
Before 1999, the Nigerian media fought a bloody war against the military, beginning with the brutal era of the late Muhammadu Buhari, who after emerging the Head of State in 1983, launched the most draconian rule that had journalist caught in the crossfire, accentuated by the infamous Decree 2 of 1984, emblematised by the ugly fate of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor.
Then came the eight years of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) nicknamed Maradona fashioned after the immense dribbling skills of the Argentine legend, Diego Maradona, which ended with the disastrous June 12, 1993 presidential election saga. Again, the Nigerian media marked the gap-toothed General, man to man and never allowed him breathing space.
Then came the most brutal of them all – the Abacha era, where the war assumed a cataclysmic dimension with Sani Abacha, the merciless military despot that took over from IBB, receiving an equal amount of blitzkrieg as he unleashed on the media even with the clear mismatch of the arsenals on both sides.
It was this media that made Abdulsalami Abubakar, who took over from Abacha to bail with his feet, completing the transition programme that in chaos after 12 years in just one year and handed over to Olusegun Obasanjo, rather than share in the experience of his predecessors.
Even Obasanjo, throughout his eight years, had his feet under fired by a watchful media, culminating in another internecine war that saw the third term agenda, one of the features of that era, crumbling under its own weight and by the force of massive onslaught launched against it.
Today, where are the same media? They have turned out – at best – some beggarly, acquiescing and insipid entities – and at worst – some undiluted, unapologetic and rabid enablers of the same anti-people, anti-democratic forces they fought in the past at the risk of tears and blood. How tragic!
What do you see today? Rather than attacking the bad behaviour that threaten the polity, it is rationalisation. So, in 2023 when a totally staggered nation was reeling in pain as the courts churned out some of the wackiest, basest and most confusing reasons to support the mindless heist against the people’s mandate, it was a that told his bemused audience – public opinion is kilometres away from law.
Today, victim-blaming has become the answer to the clearly dangerous and life-threatening crisis of Nigeria’s drift to a one-party state where President Bola Tinubu could even emerge as a monarch, with limitless powers, if not limitless tenure.
Now, where is the agenda-setting function of the media? It is the function of the media to ferret out malfeasance, maladministration, and bad behaviour, without which governance will degenerate into an irresponsible cabal or a syndicate that perpetrates its actions in darkness. Unfortunately, that is where Nigeria is today. Else, when the media launched the fierce battle against the military, was it for the absence of the mistake on the opposite side. When the media joined the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) in its battle to revalidate the June 12 election and enthronement of full-blown democracy led by Moshood Abiola, was it that the patrons of that war were all blameless.
Yes! In spite of the large baggage Abiola, an acolyte of the military, this ugly record was pushed to the background in the interest of the bigger good – democracy. Going by today’s standard, Nigerian media would have focused on the Abiola’s association with the military and other faultlines as a basis to blame him.
Had that happened, where would Nigeria have been today? But because the media were focused on the larger picture, they in the realization that whatever touches the nose is already close to the mouth, they fought relentlessly. That is how we got here. Could that be said of the situation today.
Joseph Pulitzer once admonished: “There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy. Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.”
How much has compromise – imbued by pecuniary, ethnic, religious and other primordial sentiments allowed this work? For how long do you blame INEC and the judiciary without blaming the media? There you find the danger – the TRAGEDY.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m the Tiny Voice!
By Sunny Igboanugo
The kite swooped on the herd of sheep and picked a lamb, soared above the skies onto its nest. The father asked one question – what did the parent say when you took their child. The kite replied – nothing father – they were just gazing at me in silence. Then the kites father made an order – return it immediately. Any parent that keeps mute when its child is in danger, has a more sinister intention hidden in his heart. The kite obeyed and returned the lamb.
The next day, the same kite swooped on a brood of chickens and picked one of them. Then the mother went hysterical flying from pillar to post in frenzied movements. On return, the father again put the same question. This time, the kite presented a different picture, describing the shrieking cries of the mother-hen and how it tried to attack and failure to retrieve its chick, went into a frenzy.
Let’s have dinner, the father quipped excitedly. Danger is over. The parent has displayed every weapon in its arsenal. That is the reason chicks remain the main dish of kites till date. My father told me this story decades ago, which of course is one of the anecdotes that is as old as minds could picture. My father probably picked it from his own father.
Yet, the implication in terms of central message has never lost its texture, despite its longevity. Rather, it has become truer with time – be careful of that man with few words – refrain from attacking a man that has not offended you – never bear false witnesses. These are standard cautionary and globally accepted natural edicts, which when observed in breaches, could result in highly disastrous consequences.
Is it not intriguing how this reality has stung Omoyele Sowore like those wicked agbisi – only those who sat on the bare floors would relate with the brain-twisting, sharp and excruciating pains those black ants delivered through the bare buttocks of children – in our mother’s kitchens in those days?
Have you been watching Vincent Otse, alias Very Dark Man, recently? What do you make of the multiple arrows he has been aiming at the heart of the Revolution Now exponent? I have my people and both the optics and the import derivable therefrom could only taper towards a central reality – cow wey no get tail na God dey drive am fly!
It was a song, sung by the popular Prince Nico Mbaga – that legend of the 1980s, whose epic – Sweet Mother – still resonates centrally in the Nigerian music history even till date, long after he was gone. I think it was the flipside of that legendary outing that dominated the airwaves at the time.
Never had that song, which you heard in those days blasting from the record shops at Achapo Street – in Ajegunle – the popular centre for music records business or through the windows of privileged homes in the face me I face you compounds in the days when even the poor afforded stockfish – now a delicacy you could only enjoy the aroma from a distance if your income is not in six figures – days when even the local women looked at ice fish with disdain and derisively related it with the “poor” as Ozu Nwada. O! What memories! But I digress!
But before I walked too far and disappeared into those days when me, as a child sleeping on a mat at a one-room apartment at Number 14 Uzor Street, but still ate lavish meals which I must now struggle to offer my wards, I return to today’s reality to ask myself why this is happening before my eyes. Why must it be VDM that is now waging a war against Sowore – with whom he was only too cozy – just yesterday!
For months now, this selfsame Sowore, had launched a massive blitzkrieg against Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), in the 2023 presidential election. In what is more of a cocktail of bits and pieces, odds and ends set of drivels rather than any form of articulated reasoning based on facts and figures, this same man, actually came out with what has now become his catchphrase – Obi is a packaged fraud!
Don’t bother to ask him for facts supporting his conclusion. The only one he supplied was that the former Governor of Anambra State, was hobnobbing with supposed thieves and brigands responsible for Nigerian woes.
Yet, this selfsame Sowore, conveniently left out his central role, and incestuous relationship with the same people at an auspicious period, which ended up in watering the ground for what he now complains about from the rooftops. Were it not for Sowore, there might not have been a President Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu as APC governments – the worst era Nigeria has ever endured and currently cursed with!
Videos even showed him being celebrated nationally for this singular role. Yet, this is the same man, assailing Obi for keeping bad company! But that is what happens with the purveyors of anti-Obi sentiments. They inevitably meet a drought and are left with nothing more to rely on but contrivances. Where the well is dry, they import water tankers to try a rescue.
Where deceit fails, they try illogic, then subterfuge, half-truths, outright lies and then mischief as they meet more frustrations. Imagine a Sowore saying that Obi packed Northerners in lorries and sent them back to their homes. In Nigeria? At what period? The same Obi who built his personal and state security architectures around northern people – Northern Aide De Camp (ADC) and Norther Commissioners of Police throughout his eight years?
To Sowore, nothing is good enough! He even mocks Obi for saying that he owns only one house in Nigeria – a development, which elsewhere defines absolute personal contentment. Elsewhere, the fact that Obi could prove this claim is demonstrable evidence of reduced propensity for induced stealing and absence of hunger for corruption and therefore a call for celebration. But what do you have here? Spite, mockery and contempt.
Now, it is not like Obi’s records – public and private are hidden. This was a man, who even as a university student, had become so successful in business that his chain of buildings were used as bank branches – that at a point was one of the 10 richest men in the UK – in fact, one of the 8.000 richest men in the world – so the source of his wealth is not suspect.
In office as governor, this was the same Obi who took schools in Anambra State from number 26 to number one, starting from his second year in office by sheer dint of visionary leadership anchored on self-denial – the only governor in history that left a whopping N75billion in the coffers – capping it all with emerging as the best in the implementation of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs).
Now, if a governor attains the first position in this globally-accepted measurement instrument – covering all indices of developmental – physical infrastructure and policy frameworks for human capital development, what else defines excellence in leadership? Yet, people like Sowore will never be persuaded.
Now you know why! VDM has supplied you with the answer. Sowore is in business. His activism is business – his Revolution Now – business – attacks on Tinubu – business – Obi is a packaged fraud – business – presidential ambition business.
Not that the world didn’t know this. But coming from familiar quarters – given the relationship between the two – both erstwhile friends – it is only gotten clearer and better. It is even moreso when the further and better particulars is not coming from Obi, but a more virulent voice!
Now, what is said about fate? What does the law of Karma say again? How does a tailless cow deal with flies again? Sowore has given us the lead and VDM has given you the answer.
But hear the philosopher! Beware of your thoughts, lest they become words; beware of your words, lest they become actions; beware of your actions, lest they become habits; beware of your habits, lest they become character; beware of your character, lest it becomes your destiny! Nigerians, think!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
His Excellency
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (Waziri Adamawa),
Former Vice President, Federal Republic of Nigeria
Abuja, Nigeria
Your Excellency
Permit me, to use this medium to address you. I apologise most profusely for breaking protocols and not following proper and established channels. But I believe this is the best and ONLY way to reach you immediately because of the urgency of the matter at hand.
I had to write you quickly after watching the interview when you appeared as a guest on Prime Time, a public affairs programme on ARISE NEWS Television. I must confess being enthralled at your physical fitness, mental alertness, eloquence, articulacy and richness of ideas. You looked every bit presidential.
That you appeared superlatively healthy physically and mentally at the ripe age of 79 can only be a gift from Allah. God has indeed preserved you so well and I congratulate you, while praying that God will grant you more years here on earth to see Nigeria become a great nation that it is meant to be and that you will make fruitful contribution towards that outcome.
Now, this is where I want to anchor the essence of this letter – the blessing of God and His expectation of man. There is no doubt from what human eyes could see that you have enjoyed this blessing tremendously. Look behind you and see how far you have come.
How many of your colleagues in the Nigerian Customs, where you left as a Deputy Director (Deputy Controller) are still remembered today? How many of them could even unlace your shoes today in terms of national recognition. How many of the people you started business with got to half of where you reached as a business mogul? How many of the people you went into politics with got to your level. How many of them are still around today – even those that are younger than you?
Please, Waziri, take a look back and count the blessings of Allah on you. How many can you count? You were preparing for your inauguration as Governor of Adamawa State, when suddenly, you were spirited from a Governor-elect to contest for Vice President and for eight years you enjoyed that position. Was that not evidence of Allah’s hands in your affairs, when the same position others sought with everything in them was offered to you on a platter of gold?
Now, compare that with the Presidency. Since 1992, you have sought this position with every effort. You have fought doggedly with the last breadth in you. Like the General you are, you have fought gallantly. But even a General must retire from the warfront and hand over to younger officers to continue where he stopped.
Such retirement does not suggest defeat. Rather, it suggests wisdom. It suggests experience. It suggests circumspection. It suggests prudence. It suggests strength.
For record six times, you had made attempts at the Presidency and for that number of times, you had failed to attain that feat. Why continue – even when time and circumstances clearly indicate that your chances of getting it at the seventh trial is bleaker than the rest? Is it not even an attempt to tempt God?
Waziri, please permit me to share this anecdote. It is about the prototype developed by Brazilians to catch monkeys. They throw utu – a kind of nut usually craved by monkeys into a bottle with a narrow neck and hang it on tree branch. The opening is wide enough to allow the hand of the monkey in, but too narrow to allow a clenched fist out.
Knowing that monkeys are greedy and would never let go, they take full advantage of this fact in setting this obvious trap. True to their expectations, the monkey would usually fit its hand into the bottle and grab the nut, but would be unable to pull it out with the nut. The owner of the trap standing by would then begin to approach. The monkey on sighting the obvious danger would start struggling with the hand inside the bottle.
Now, all the monkey needed do is to free the hand and let the nut go to save itself. But it never does. Because all its senses are focused on the sweet taste of the nut it loses the sense of danger and stays with the bottle until it is caught – not even having the opportunity of tasting the same nut. That is how the Brazilians catch monkeys.
Alhaji, does this send any meaningful message? Does it look or sound familiar? Like the situation of the monkey with its hand in the bottle, Nigeria is in danger at this time. You have the singular opportunity of saving it. The only way to do it is through the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
Your insistence on running for the ticket of the party ahead of the 2027 presidential election represents the perfect imagery of the monkey’s hand in the bottle.
No doubt like the nut to the monkey, the Presidency is sweet. But like the unpromising situation of the monkey, there is no way you can pull the nut out with a clenched fist. The only option is to loosen your fist and let go.
Waziri Adamawa, free your hand. Let go this quest for Presidency. It is not yours. Destiny has denied you the opportunity. Your biggest opportunity was in 2019, though it was not to be for reasons that are now history.
Today, the odds are stacked against you! You are not from the South – make it the South East. You are no longer young. You belong to the old order. Yes! You are favoured to win the ADC primaries but winning the election proper is a different kettle of fish. There is no way you can win it. Forget what your followers are telling you.
On the other hand, sitting right beside you is Peter Obi. All the odds are in his favour. He is from the South – the South East. He is young. He has the organic following. He will win the presidential election of Nigeria before midday on January 18, 2027.
Let me conclude this letter by creating two scenarios. Consider a situation where you contest this election and fail as you are bound to. What will it be said about you? How will history record you?
Will you not be seen as the man who finally sounded the death-knell on Nigerian democracy by allowing President Bola Tinubu transform Nigeria into another Paul Biya’s Cameroun, Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni? Surely, that imminent fall will not only be a fall in unfulfilled goal, it will be a fall of destiny of a national. The consequences are heavy, grave and unimaginable!
On the other hand, if you conquer the greed of the monkey and let the nut go, you will not only have helped in freeing Nigeria from the immediate bondage in which it is destined in the hands of Tinubu and his brood of vipers, you would have saved it from the cataclysmic eruption of blitzkrieg that might result as a counter.
Remember how it is now history that you destroyed the PDP by insisting to run against the zoning arrangement. How will it sound that after delivering the fatal poison that killed the once largest party in Africa with a deadly political fang you whipped the ADC with a poisonous tail to achieve the same result.
As we speak now, David Mark, ADC National Chairman is from the North. Now, you want to take the presidential ticket, thus replaying the reel of the PDP scenario. Is it not obvious that the result will be the same? Is it not the same PDP playbook?
Waziri Adamawa, remember that even Nnamdi Azikiwe, with all his greatness, never became President. Obafemi Awolowo never attained the position either. Yet, as a reporter with The Guardian in Enugu, I could not count the number of dignitaries, Nigerians and foreigners, whom I reported their presence at Onuiyi Haven in Nsukka, home of the late Owelle of Onitsha.
I assume that of Ikenne, the home of the great Awo would also have been the same before his demise. Who says your own home in Abuja or Yola, would not be a Mecca for Nigerians and world leaders to pay their homage by the time this race is run and the mileage counted.
That will only be possible if you decide to play the role destiny has put in your hands. Waziri Adamawa! Save Nigerian Democracy! Save Nigeria! Let your name be written in gold letters and not with blood of Nigerians. Yes! President may be denied but Father of Democracy is there. It even sounds sweeter!
May God guide you.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
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